Help needed for copying Thai vowels into Word document

[BaldPlumber]

Hi

I have recently started to learn to read and write Thai, in an effort to improve my spoken Thai and at the moment am still learning the consonants and vowels.

I am attempting to make a double sided, laminated crib sheet. One side containing the Thai alphabet and the other side containing the vowels and tones.

I have had no problems with the first side, but the second side, the vowel side is causing me a few challenges.

My difficulty is that I wish to show the different vowels, in all four positions, in relation to a place holder - such as a hyphen. The actual vowel symbols would be emboldened, enlarged and highlighted for emphasis and this is where I am running into problems. I don't want to use a real Thai consonant as this would be confusing, but my Thai keyboard refuses to apply some vowel symbols to a character, such as a hyphen, that is not a valid Thai character.

So, whilst I could easily, with a bit of fiddling about, have;-

โ - ะ

But what I can't seem to be able to do is to use the hyphen for vowels such as this:-

กิ

Obviously, you have to imagine that I want a "-" and not a "ก"

In addition, even if I could use the hyphen, in the example above I have no idea how I would be able to differentiate the characters in order to be able to highlight the vowel symbol.

Can anyone help?

Cheers

[BaldPlumber]

BTW, this would also apply to tone symbols too.

[fire69water]

Seems to me, if you use a standard Thai keyboard, you can't do that. I so happened to create my own Thai keyboard called 'qwertythai' years ago, and what do you know:

-ิ

-ี

-ึ

-ื

-ุ

-ู

Cut and paste away!

[BaldPlumber]

Cheers!

[BaldPlumber]

Sorry to be a pest, but could do the same for the tones?

Thanks

[fire69water]

-ิ -ิ่ -ิ้ -ิ๊ -ิ๋

-ี -ี่ -ี้ -ี๊ -ี๋

-ึ -ึ่ -ึ้ -ึ๊ -ึ๋

-ื -ื่ -ื้ -ื๊ -ื๋

-ุ -ุ่ -ุ้ -ุ๊ -ุ๋

I don't think there are actual Thai words with above short vowels incorporating tone marks, but anyway...

Funny thing is, when I view these over my iPad, the vowels and the hyphens separate. Not so with my Windows laptop.

[Richard W]

-ิ -ิ่ -ิ้ -ิ๊ -ิ๋

-ี -ี่ -ี้ -ี๊ -ี๋

-ึ -ึ่ -ึ้ -ึ๊ -ึ๋

-ื -ื่ -ื้ -ื๊ -ื๋

-ุ -ุ่ -ุ้ -ุ๊ -ุ๋

I don't think there are actual Thai words with above short vowels incorporating tone marks, but anyway...

กิ่ง จิ้ม จิ๊ว จิ๋ม

ซึ่ง ผึ้ง ปึ๊ง กึ๋น

สั่ง ยั้ง ปั๊ม โบตั๋น

Two series were missing:

-ั -ั่ -ั้ -ั๊ -ั๋

-ู -ู่ -ู้ -ู๊ -ู๋

Funny thing is, when I view these over my iPad, the vowels and the hyphens separate. Not so with my Windows laptop.

It depends on the rendering system and the font. Some of us have been pestering for non-spacing Thai marks to be allowed on hyphens for years, and the pestering is finally bearing fruit.

Having combining characters in different colours stopped being straightforward with complex script support in Windows XP. The technical problem is that for the characters to combine properly, rather than using an average position, the base character and the mark have to be in the same 'character run'. Character runs have the same properties, such as size and colour. One of the problems is that sometime two characters are combined in a high quality font, such as 'fi' in a hight quality English font. It's then not quite clear which bit should have the colour of 'f' and which the colour of 'i', and OpenType didn't offer a solution.

There are various work-arounds. One method is to generate the text as PostScript, and then add the colouring commands to the PostScript file. It's extremely fiddly. Another method, if you have multicoloured font support, is to generate fonts in which different characters inherently have different colours. (What do you mean, you don't know how to create a font?) Unhappily, I can't think of any simple method.

[BaldPlumber]

Just a quicky:

Could someone please point me in the direction of an explanation for the symbol above the last character in my name

ไมค์

My understanding is that this forces the pronunciation of the end of the word into a hard "k"

But please correct me if I'm wrong

[SlyAnimal]

It means that the last consonant isn't pronounced

Often with loanwords though, Thai people who know the correct pronunciation will still pronounce them correctly, but generally speaking, they'll just pronounce them the way that they're spelt.

e.g. They might call you "Maiii" but if they know that your name should be said as "Mike", then they'll just say that (But with a Thai accent of course).

They usually do this to kinda keep the original form of the word and it helps to differentiate it from words in Thai that are spelt the same way.

[tifino]

it can be tough to learn (about that last consonant)...

so thinking laterally, from an opposite Thai point of view:

- if he sees the word 'tough' for example:

- the ...'gh' are not spoken like they are seen,

- and the sound of the spoken 'f', is not seen.

[BaldPlumber]

Haha! I was 100% wrong.

Thanks, I know the last consonant it's not normally fully formed.

Is there a way in writing, to force the aspiration of the consonant into a hard k?

It usually takes about 10 attempts for a thai to get my name right verbally lol

Anyway, all good fun [emoji3]

[Richard W]

Thanks, I know the last consonant it's not normally fully formed.

Is there a way in writing, to force the aspiration of the consonant into a hard k?

I'm not sure what you're getting at with 'not fully formed'. A final /k/ is not normally 'exploded' in any Thai word, so that comment could apply equally well to มาก. The problem is that in Thai, a word cannot end in two or more sounded consonants, and the 'iii' of 'Maiii', as Sly Animal transcribed it, counts as a consonant. Thai spelling for Thai doesn't need a symbol to show that a second final consonant is sounded - it's not supposed to happen in Thai.

Now, a few generations ago, a Thai might have hazarded a pronunciation *[M]mai[L]kha for ไมค, for then นม represented not just [M]nom but also [H]na[H]ma, now written as นมะ. Some dictionaries, e.g. Se-ed's Modern English-Thai Dictionary of 1998, clarify the sound by indicating the pronunciation as ไมคฺ - the dot below, just called phinthu, signifies that there is no vowel, and the lack of thanthakhat shows that the consonant is to be pronounced. The phinthu was introduced as part of spelling reform for Sanskrit and Pali in the Thai script.

Note that there is no such mark used for meek (pron. มีค) or rogue (pron. โรก) - the reader is expected to know that the two final letters are to pronounced differently from one another, and if he is making that distinction, they're likely to come out more like English finals.

[BaldPlumber]

Thank you for your extremely comprehensive reply.

I am very grateful ☺

Hopefully, I can pick your brains later on other stuff.

[Richard W]

- if he sees the word 'tough' for example:

- the ...'gh' are not spoken like they are seen,

- and the sound of the spoken 'f', is not seen.

You're in good company in your error. The English word tough doesn't contain the digraph 'gh', which is usually 'g' in English (there are exceptions such as Irish names like Callaghan), but the trigraph 'ugh'. The 'u' moves the pronunciation to the lips, so /f/ is one of the possibilities.